Chunking

           I have found a lot of articles on learning the English language. I think this is because more people are coming to the United States and want to learn our language. The newest method of learning a language I found out about is chunking. We go back to the sense of children picking up on a group of words easier than just a word at a time. This is also true for adults. They do not have to break down the words, but can get a general gist of the meaning by the phrase. A combination of words that you regularly see is known as a collocation.

            Studies have been made by computer analysis of usage patterns in large databases of texts, which are called corpora. English as a Second Language teachers use this to determine the common chunks in English. This helps them teach the students, who learn a lot of their second language based on chunks of the language.

            Some people are for this new form of learning a language, but there are still others who do not agree with the new method. A British writer talked about how grammar, pronunciation and other skills get shafted when using the new method. He also related that there are many ways to say one chunk. It would be very hard for a person to learn chunking and expect to sound like a native speaker in the future. I think he is getting at the fact that English is so wordy that there are multiple ways to say one thing and while English speakers know that, many non-native speakers don’t.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19FOB-OnLanguage-Zimmer.html?ref=englishlanguage

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